


At Thy Request, Monster (I Will Do Reason, Any Reason)

by sharkygal



Category: Boardwalk Empire
Genre: Betrayal, Interrogation, M/M, Missing Scene, Non Consensual, Ominous Foreshadowing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-21
Updated: 2011-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-27 16:56:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/298013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharkygal/pseuds/sharkygal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A friend you get for nothing; an enemy you have to buy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	At Thy Request, Monster (I Will Do Reason, Any Reason)

**Notes** : Set during 2x10 - _Georgia Peaches_. An ugly little thought that wouldn't leave me alone -- consider this an exorcism. Trigger warning for forced oral sex.

o o o

He's not a brave kind of guy. He knows it. Nobody ever said, "Hey, that Mickey's one tough nut. There's a fella I want at my back." And for good reason.

But he tried this time. Manny wants him to spill about Jimmy, and he smiles, nervous and small, gives him a line about business partners and protecting his investment, but what he really means is: _please don't ask me. I can't give you Jimmy. I can't._

In the moment, he tries to be brave, two parts doing what he always does (squeak by, weasel out) and one part impulse he can't even explain.

But Manny Horvitz isn't interested in bravery. Manny Horvitz takes 'I can't' and bends it into 'you can' and 'you will'. Manny Horvitz hangs men like dead animals in his meat locker, and cuts them apart.

Manny fuckin' Horvitz is the scariest man he's ever known, and with those bear paw hands wrapped around his throat, Mickey finds his courage looking awful thin.

That first shove against the couch, he's too shocked to understand or even feel it at first, the agony of impact, his half-broken neck. It comes fast enough, though. Makes up for lost time, too.

Sickening pain. Enormous pain. Manny slams him with tooth-rattling strength, again and again, and he can't breathe, it knocks the wind out of him. Little black and copper confetti specks erupt in front of Mickey's eyes.

He's pretty sure if he doesn't cough up, he's gonna be another schmuck in the icebox. He's pretty sure Manny's gonna beat him to death right here on his wife's sofa in the middle of his goddamn living room.

"You ready to have a civil conversation?" Manny's squeezing so hard, his brace is creaking, and he can't answer, can't even catch a breath. Jesus, God, he's dying.

Mickey would rip at those hands, except he can't be sure he could break free and he sure as hell can't risk making Manny any angrier. There's still a chance, still something he wants. So he just paws, weak as a kitten, and tries not to panic.

( _panic **more**_ )

Manny lets go, and it's like being born. Mickey gasps for air, life -- clutches onto Manny's arm, shaking, so he doesn't slide right off the couch. "Munya, please," he pants. It's the only thing he can think to say, can hardly think at all. "Please, there's gotta be a mix-up."

"A mix-up," Manny's eyes glint, ice in the river, frozen stones. He grabs a fistful of Mickey's hair, and forces him to crane up at the raw hole in his shoulder. "This look like a mix-up to you?"

No, it doesn't. It looks like somebody got sent to kill Manny, and maybe it was Jimmy did the sending, and why couldn't he just pay the man? Why'd he have to go and do a crazy thing like this?

"We don't know it was Jimmy!" he yelps, fumbling desperate, some kind of explanation, an out, anything. His neck's screaming, icepicks in his spine. "That guy coulda come to Atlantic City anytime. We don't know for sure."

"You're going to lie to me now?" Manny slaps him, whip's lash, vicious. Pain and light explode across his vision. "You're gonna lie right to my face?"

Another slap, harder, and then another. There's blood in Mickey's mouth, wet on his chin. His brain feels as bruised and scrambled as his face. "I ain't lying," he chokes out, and it sounds like begging. "I'd never lie to you, you know I wouldn't."

Thick, work-rough fingers dig into his jaw. "Then you'll answer my question," Manny says, reasonable, soft. Dangerous. The hand tangled in his hair hasn't let up even a little.

He's not brave. He ain't. He wants to tell. It's just when he starts to, this picture comes up in his mind of Jimmy's wife and his little boy, pudgy baby fingers, white fragile curving necks. Big watching eyes. He sees it and can't stop seeing, and the words dry up and stick to his tongue.

This is a nightmare. He doesn't know what the hell is wrong with him.

"Nothing to say now, huh," Manny slugs him in the side of the head, teeth flashing white fury, and it's like getting hit by a hammer. "Gonna hold out on me, you little cocksucker. You're gonna hold out on _me_ ," he hits him again. Mickey's reeling, head spinning, can hardly hear Manny over the ringing in his ears. "You won't open your mouth, klafte, I'm gonna open it for you."

He expects to take another hit, get the squeeze again or maybe a gun stuck in his face, but Manny grips his hair like a leash and reaches for his fly instead.

It doesn't take a genius to figure what's coming. Mickey's gut lurches. So this is how it's gonna be. "Munya," he whimpers. "Come on, we're pals, ain't we? Oh, Munya, _please_."

He doesn't bother with 'no' or 'don't'. Mickey's done time. He's been the fresh fish. He's been a scared guy with no friends.

He knows the score.

Manny gets his buttons open one-handed, tugs his cock out. "Look what you make me fucking do to you," he snarls, and drags Mickey by the hair toward him.

There's always a little struggle. He can't stop the initial cringe away, but he knows better than to fight much. Manny shoves him against his prick, smooth head dragging across his cheek, his mouth -- gets him by the jaw again, prying open, and Mickey reluctantly lets him.

The slide in is jarring. He never gets used to that invasion. Hits the back of his throat, and Mickey jerks, gags around him, but the hand on the back of his head holds him there. Manny doesn't make a sound.

 _Jesus, kid, relax. It ain't gonna kill you._ First guy who put him on his knees told him that, in a corner of the laundry room while the screws turned a blind eye. He'd been sixteen.

Turned out to be pretty good advice. Mickey squeezes his eyes shut and just tries to breathe, waiting out the panic, the urge to yank away or get sick. He fists Manny's trouser leg, trembling and tight as a piano wire, but he stays put. He stays.

He doesn't even move for a second after Manny lets up, frozen and swallowing awkwardly around him. "Good fella," Manny rumbles. If his grip loosens any, it ain't much. "I don't have to tell you mind the teeth, do I?"

No. They both know he doesn't.

It's clumsy. This ain't his first time, or his tenth, but he's no pro either. He doesn't have any talent or skill. All he can do is hold on and let Manny do what he wants, take what he's given. Send his mind someplace else.

Could be worse. Has been, before. It'll probably only happen this once, and nobody's gonna try and fuck him after (probably). Manny's the cleanest he's ever had, too, smells like soap and tastes like salt, nothing. Manny's the first who was cut. Maybe that helps.

Nothing helps.

Manny starts to talk the closer he gets, a harsh mutter that's mostly Yiddish. Mickey's too rusty to keep up, but it ain't necessary. He knows a death sentence when he hears it. He knows what 'you'd better' and 'or else' sound like in any language.

Rough thrusts, rougher voice and pull on his hair, the back of his neck, and it hurts, it hurts. But Mickey just keeps holding on, tears leaking silently down his face because this is his life, Jimmy throws him off a balcony and sends him here and now this from Munya, and why does everybody he calls a friend have to kick him in the teeth? Why do they all have to treat him like garbage?

Why's he so disposable?

Manny doesn't moan or curse or grunt. He just grips tight, shoves deep, and then there's salt and bitter, taste like the cheap liquor Jimmy sent to buy him off. "Spit that on my wife's clean floor, and I'll crack your head open," Manny says as he tucks his cock away, glistening obscene wet and still half-hard.

Mickey swallows and wipes his mouth with the back of one hand, crying quietly.

"Tell me," Manny says, and he does.

Familiar strike and hiss of a match; Manny lights a cigarette, and offers it to him. Mickey takes it with shaky fingers, risks a glance up. "He's got a wife and a kid there, Munya," he says, but leaves it at that. He doesn't dare more.

"You know me," Manny says. "I'm a sweetheart. I don't touch a hair I don't have to."

It's true. But Mickey, aching jaw and tobacco taste mixed with spunk, also knows 'have to' is a matter of opinion.

He can feel Manny watching him. Silence lays there, wool blanket thick and heavy. It makes him itch under his skin the same way. "I didn't know," he blurts out, thick and snuffling, then stares at his cigarette, jittering ember like a firefly. "I swear to God, I didn't know what Jimmy was doing. You gotta believe me."

A hand rests on his head, and Mickey can't help the flinch, the tremble that shivers all through him. But Manny's only smoothing his hair back into place, tidying where he'd raked with hard grabbing hands, wrenching fingers. Erasing the mess. "I believe you, tatelleh," he says, real genuine warmth. Mickey hates himself a little for wanting that. "You've always dealt straight with me."

You do right by Munya, he'll do right by you. Everybody knows that. Everybody but Jimmy, who just wouldn't listen, wouldn't keep his word, couldn't see when to _stop_ , and now look what's happened. Happening. Will happen.

His eyes sting, tight feeling in his throat that ain't the brace. Manny's fingers brush along his face, tender somehow, and he tsks, fishes a handkerchief out of his pocket. He licks a corner, holds Mickey's chin, gentle now in the fingerprint bruises, and starts to clean him up.

"You did good," he says, wiping away blood and tears and come. Mickey shudders. "Didn't give up Darmody too quick, even after the way he treats you. That's respectable," Manny pats his cheek, his old pal again, and it's like gratitude and eating razors all together. "You've got some loyalty. Rare thing, you know."

Loyalty. Yeah, that's him all over. Loyal Doyle.

"Mieczyslaw," nobody's called him that in years; Manny doesn't have to lift a finger to make Mickey look up at him, heavy serious gaze from under raised eyebrows. "You're squared in my book. We'll put this mishegas behind us now, hm?"

Mickey takes a hard drag off his cigarette, nods. "Sure...sure thing," he smiles, and if it's a little weak, a little wobbly, nobody's counting. "I forgot already."

It's a particular skill of his, amnesia. If he didn't forgive and forget when it came to guys who fucked him over, why, he wouldn't have a friend in the world. And friends are good to have. World's an awful cold place without them.

Even friends like his.

Manny claps him on the shoulder, helps him to his feet, onto legs that feel like rubber. "There's a good fella," he says. Déjà vu prickles up Mickey's neck, an echo of low and pleased, gravel and lilt, tug in his hair. Taste of skin. _Good fella._

No. Don't think. Don't think about it, not yet (not ever). Mickey puts on his hat, and tries not to twitch when Manny presses a hand to the small of his back, guides him to the door.

There's part of him waiting for Manny to put a bullet in his head. Part of him that's surprised every second he doesn't do it.

Manny opens the door for him instead. "Nice of you dropping by like this. Your visits are always so interesting," he says, and his smile is all teeth. "But next time maybe you should come to Philly just for the brisket. Good for your health."

It ain't funny, but Mickey laughs anyway, thin and rickety, bruised. A guy can't just wait for something funny to laugh about. He did that, he'd never laugh at all. "Yeah. Yeah, of course," he says, because he doesn't even pretend that this changes anything. Anything outside him, and he's already putting it in a box, burying it deep. "I'll, uh, I'll have to do that."

Manny's touch sudden on his shoulder, and sweat breaks out cold over his whole body. He freezes. "And when these friends of yours fuck you," Manny pinning him under a stare like the chalaf in his shop, blunt tip and razor edge. "You know where to come."

Mickey swallows hard. "Sure."

Tomorrow, when he's got a handle on it, Manny will be his pal again, and it'll be like this never happened (one more tick in the secret ledger he keeps in his head; one more reason to burn it all and everyone with it, should the time come). Tomorrow, it'll be business as usual, and it won't matter whether he's brave or not. Nothing will matter at all.

Today he limps to his car, Manny's flat gaze following him through lace curtains like a lion in the long grass, and his knees have almost quit trembling. He sits behind the steering wheel, cold engine, and smokes the rest of his consolation cigarette, then lights another and smokes that down, too. He doesn't think about the wheels in motion now, his turn cranking them. Blood in a house on the beach. Thin white, white neck. A little tin train.

Mickey jams the starter button, lets the motor sputter and roar and wash away all the thoughts he ain't having, an ocean of sound. Drives off for the city in the sand, crumbling empire of salt and lead and bottles, where he's gonna sample his own merchandise until he can't remember the tide coming in and the leviathan with it, straight from the Old World -- the debt to be collected.

Jimmy should have just paid.

Looks like now he's gonna, one way or another.

o o o

Klafte - bitch, cunt  
Tatelleh - term of endearment for a boy or man; buddy, darling, etc. (lit. 'little father' or 'little man')  
Mishegas - craziness  
Chalaf - the knife used in shechita (the ritual slaughter of animals)


End file.
